e-Learning Authoring Research Blog

posted by rtumbok2 on September 23, 2009  
IT'S ALL IN THE DESIGN MODEL  
It's all about the standard design models. Right now in the e-Learning industry, there is only one standard design model, which we all quiver at the sound of it - "The Page-turner." The page-turner is so accepted by and large as the e-learning standard that most large companies pattern all of their internal e-Learning and review processes around it. These standards include: Back/Next buttons, Bookmarking, Navigation Menu, Multiple Choice Quiz, SCORM, etc. And since this standard model is so widely used, that is what people's perception is of what an e-Learning development tool should do. I think once the industry realizes that there are far superior design models than the page-turner, a demand for more robust e-learning authoring tools will surface in the market. But until other design models become standard, companies will always go back to the page-turner and it has and will be a long and arduous uphill battle to convince otherwise. For now, I predict tools that allow easier implementation of video and shiny graphics and all of those things that make page-turners look "nice." Mostly because that is what companies are looking for, and not solid interactive e-learning design.

posted by benjaminkit on September 23, 2009  
ACTIONSCRIPT FIREWORKS AND OPEN SOURCE  
 
It does seem like this is a problem that won't go away. At a basic level, if someone decides to go custom it more often than not means they want a greater level of control and a more involved learning experience than a proprietary tool is going to provide. The balance between the simplicity of authoring and the customization of the learning experience is tricky to find.  
 
I think one solution (and I am biased in this area) is the creation and use of frameworks within the flex/flash/actionscript world. No doubt you already have numerous frameworks that you use in house when developing courseware, some of which may be custom built by you, others may be open source. While there is still a high level of complexity involved, and you still need to be a programmer, frameworks can attack the time it takes to develop learning (and time is money) as well as lower the barrier of entry to less experienced developers. Speaking as a Flex developer, it is eminently possible to create frameworks that allow you to generate some reasonably complex and custom learning using mxml alone. At that point, you get the potential use of the Flex Builder GUI and the code gets hidden behind xml, both of which simplify the programming.  
 
That said, I think there is at the very least a niche (and probably a substantial hole) in the market for more learning tools. I agree that more and better tools would lower the cost and effort for everyone and I would like to see it too, even though I make my living creating the complex stuff! I believe e-learning will beget e-learning. Increasing the low cost market will expand the custom market.  
 
Personally, I'm always expanding my own actionscript learning framework because it saves me a lot of time and re-work. I wish I had more time to develop it further and open source some of it. I would personally encourage you to "productize" your own tools, both open source (which can be revenue generating) and proprietary. Increasing the visibility of e-learning in the wider development and IT communities can only help grow the marke

posted by Judy Unrein on September 23, 2009  
YES SERIOUSLY CONSIDER "PRODUCTIZING" YOUR OWN TOOLS! :)  
 
I do think that the tool can have a profound effect on the design. Over on the LinkedIn group for the e-Learning Instructional Design class, we got into a conversation about storyboarding/design processes recently and I realized that the tools people use for storyboarding (mostly Word and PowerPoint among the designers I know) all but force you to take a linear path. You *can* do something non-linear with them, but it takes effort and intention. I'm most successful when I design my interactions first, far away from the tool.  
 
I think authoring tools tend to do the same thing. If you look at the most popular ones, they have a book/linear structure. Captivate, Lectora, PowerPoint (and all the tools that are based on PowerPoint) fall into this category. You can do branching and such, but that's clearly not what the program was created for.  
 
In short, yes, I do think there's a gap in the industry for an easy-to-use and powerful authoring tool that assumes the designer wants the learner to do more than hit the Next button.

posted by nollet on September 24, 2009  
YES YES! 
 
I am extremely exasperated with the choice of tools out there. I'm still using Authorware because I cannot find anything else that allows me, a non scriptor, to put out quality, interactive e-learning programs as we're used to. Something like Lectora would require me to waste precious time to learn and quite frankly, the Lectora learning community does not seem nearly as helpful as the Authorware one is. This is huge. Captivate is getting close now that it allows variables. But easily (or fairly easily) customizable drag and drop exercises are a must and this is not available in captivate. The only program that seems to come close to my skill level and allows me to put together fairly good interactions is free--it's called "Course Lab". I haven't used it to do an entire course, but I wonder what everyone else might think of it? http://www.courselab.com/ I'm just so afraid to commit to and learn a new product now after investing so much time learning and using the industry standard product, only to have it go away! I'd be VERY interested in what you folks could come up with to help people such as myself.

These are very interesting comments. Thank you all. I think I'll write a short comment in reply to each. 
 
rtumbok2, your identification of what is "standard" or expected becoming what should be done is interesting. Very interesting, indeed. Expectation and tradition must be cousins. They tend to trump needs, don't they? 
 
Authorware did something interesting, the tool not only broke with tradition (it had a visual logic editor and didn't begin with a glorified multiple-choice question editor, but rather focused on conversation flow), it also allowed people to experiment with models that immersed learners in experiences. 
 
Many Authorware users have told me that if it weren't for the tool, they wouldn't have been able to persuade their organizations to do anything but page-turners. For their organizations, "standard" was eventually redefined.

benjaminkit (otherwise known as Benjamin Kit), thanks for the encouragement. We're somewhat in the same boat: one of the reasons organizations contract with our studios is that the current tools require so much development expertise. If we made development extremely easy, would we be needed? 
 
I think the answer actually remains yes, because designing great e-learning experiences is every bit as difficult as building them. And I find the two have to be done in an integrated fashion. So, perhaps with much more powerful tools, the overall costs would come down significantly and we'd all be able to get better learning experiences to become the "standard."

Judy Unrein, I'm so thankful for your comment as I've wondered so many times if I'm the only person that thinks storyboarding in an essentially linear tool pushes designs toward linearity. Just because you "can do branching" doesn't overcome the fact that these tools gravitate toward linearity. If you aren't constantly fighting gravity, gravity wins.

nollet, you aren't alone. There are many Authorware users out there; more, I think, than I had been assuming. I base this simply on two very informal observations: 1) the number of people who tell me at conferences that they are using Authorware and intend to continue to do so until something better comes along and 2) the number of organizations looking for a means of preserving all their Authorware files (that they continue to create). 
 
I can so easily imagine tools that would be superior to Authorware, yet with the flow of new tools that continue to be introduced, I think it's so disappointing that none have picked up on the key features that made it so valuable. I continue to be perplexed about why this is. Do people just not familiarize themselves with Authorware before darting out to create a new tool? Or do they not recognize the essential advantages it has? 
 
This one leaves me bewildered. 
 
In any case, the exploration we're doing not only carries the Authorware advantages (as we see them) forward, but also, of course, moves quite a bit beyond where Adobe/Macromedia left it.

Can we offer out students a new model of teaching & learning?  
A personalized, customized, learning ecosystem? 
 
It seems that education is moving towards providing much more customized, personalized learning environments – environments whereby the student selects and utilizes their preferred means of learning. Students will need to be able to continually know where to go to get information in the future. How can institutions of higher education help students in their never-ending quest for obtaining effective, lifelong, learning? Such tools in their toolbox could be: 
 
* Internal and external blogs 
* Internal and external wikis 
* Internal and external discussions boards 
* RSS feeds 
* Web sites 
* Facebook 
* Textbooks 
* Internal and external virtual classrooms / webinars / seminars 
* Online tutorials 
* Online simulations 
* Online games 
* Articles and journals from online-library databases 
* Ability to contribute content 
* Rating systems for content 
o For other students’ content 
o For publisher’s content 
o For faculty’s content 
* Ability to poll other students 
* Ability to use various devices with this learning ecosystem 
o Laptops/notebooks 
o PDAs 
o Smart phones and iPod touches 
o Tablet PCs/Macs 
 
* Each discipline / department creates and offers their own feeds – which their majoring/minoring students can subscribe to 
* Let students access and build what works for them 
* Help students identify and pursue their passions 
* Over the next 1-3 decades, the learning technologies will change so fast it will make our minds spin. We need to teach our students how to learn…how to access information. 
* User requirements must be explicitly ascertained from faculty and students via: 
o Focus groups 
o Interviews 
o Surveys 
o Observations 
o Other 
 
Are learning agents a part of these students' futures? Perhaps. I'm just thinking out loud here, but can we supplement or get rid of CMS's/LMS's in exchange for a personalized learning ecosystem?

Daniel, these are really good points. Within our Zebra project, we're actually exploring much of this. We've been keeping close to heart the motto, "Everyone is a learner, everyone is a teacher." Instead of either content or teacher-centric learning environments, we're trying to think what would constitute an optimally learner-centric environment. 
 
Back years ago when I was focused on LMS, we felt the whole purpose of the system was to create a learner-centric environment. And while I think an LMS is a tool which can help, we tend not to think of what a learner-centric environment could really be when use the current notion of an LMS.

At the moment Authorware, as it currently is, can do almost everything.  
 
 
 
Ok, it lacks a proper text editor, it lacks alpha channels on the customized buttons... and it does not output to swf.... and most administrators are not very willing to allow the installation of the Adobe Authorware Web Player (although they have nothing against the installation of the Adobe Reader!).  
 
 
 
It needs to communicate with any Flash object in any Flash Player version, and it also needs to be able to play the latest video codecs using the digital movie icon. 
 
 
 
Give me an enhanced Authorware Tool that will also be able to import authorware code, and I will buy it today! (OK - price does matter). 
 
 
 
Buy back the code from Adobe and improve on it... I think many of the above issues have been addressed in the development of Authorware 8 a couple of years ago... before it was canned.